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darling. It might be a present for the new baby.”
    Megan scowled deeply and her chin began to tremble. “But the baby’s going to be a boy,” she said. “You said so. And boys don’t play with dollies!”
    “We
hope
the baby is going to be a boy,” Elizabeth explained. “But we don’t know. And if you have a little sister, don’t you think she’ll love the doll as much as you do?”
    Megan’s features took on a look of intransigence that almost made Bill laugh. “No,” she declared. “Babies don’t even play with dolls. All they do is eat and cry and wet their diapers.” She turned to her father, and her eyes opened wide. “Please, Daddy, can’t I have her?”
    “I’ll tell you what,” Bill said. “Why don’t we put the doll away for a while and see if we can find out who sent it? Then, if it turns out it was meant for you, it’ll be yours. And if it turns out it was meant for the baby, we’ll wait until the baby is born, and if it’s a little boy, then the doll can be your first present from your little brother. How does that sound?”
    Megan looked uncertain. “Where are we going to put her?”
    Bill thought for a moment. “What about the hall closet, downstairs?”
    Megan brightened. “All right,” she agreed. “But I get to carry her downstairs.”
    “Sounds fair enough,” Bill agreed. He winked at Elizabeth. “After all, you’ve gotten to have it all morning. Don’t you think it’s only fair that Megan should get to carry it?”
    For a moment he almost thought he saw hesitation in his wife’s eyes, as if she wasn’t quite ready to give up the doll, but then she smiled. “Of course,” she agreed. She knelt down and handed the doll to Megan. “But you have to cradle it, just like I did. Even though it’s not a realbaby, you could hurt it if you dropped it, and it’s very valuable.”
    “I won’t drop her,” Megan declared, holding the antique doll close to her chest just the way her mother had a moment earlier. “I love her.”
    Together, the family went downstairs and opened the hall closet. “She’ll get cold in here,” Megan said. “We have to wrap her in a blanket.” She darted back up the stairs, returning a minute later with the small pink blanket that had first been in her crib, and since then at the foot of her bed. “She can use this,” she said, carefully wrapping the doll in the blanket. Then she surrendered it to her father, who put it up on the shelf, nested among the woolen ski caps, gloves, and scarves.
    “There,” he said. “Now she’ll sleep until we find out who she belongs to.” But as they moved toward the dining room, where Mrs. Goodrich was putting their lunch on the table, he saw Megan turn back to look longingly at the closet.
    He had a suspicion that before the afternoon was over, the doll would somehow have found its way from the closet to his daughter’s room.
    That, however, would be something Elizabeth would have to deal with, since he himself would be in Port Arbello.
    “Do you really have to go?” Elizabeth asked when he told her what had happened at the bank that morning and what he had to do now.
    “If we want to eat, I do. I’m pretty sure I can still get the job. But I’m probably going to have to hole up in a motel for the night, putting together numbers so I can nail it down in the morning.” He glanced at his wife’s swollen belly, which seemed—impossibly—to have grown even larger just in the few hours he’d been gone. “Will you be all right?”
    “I have a whole month yet before he’s due,” Elizabeth said, instantly reading his thoughts. “Believe me, I’m notgoing to deliver early just because you’re out of town. So go, do what you have to do, and don’t worry about Megan and me. Mrs. Goodrich has been taking care of me all my life. She can do it one more night.”
    “Mrs. Goodrich is almost ninety,” Bill reminded her.
    “She shouldn’t even be working.”
    “Try telling her that,” Elizabeth